Allocate base state special education funding by prior-year count of students with disabilities, weighted by disability cost groupings¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (3 for, 2 mixed) · 3 studies (2 associational, 1 review), q2 · 0 of 3 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The report recommends replacing California's census-based (ADA) allocation with one based on the actual count of students with disabilities. Long term, it proposes weighting by "three cost groupings: low, mid, and high" derived from disability category costs; near term, it proposes a statewide average per-student rate applied to the prior year's child count, with a more precise IEP-data-based measure developed later.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Prior-year counts of students with disabilities by entity
• Disability category cost groupings derived from the education cost function
• For the more precise measure, statewide collection of IEP data indicators of student need

Constraints¶

• The article notes there are limitations to using disability categories as a proxy for student need and program cost
• California lacks a statewide database of IEP performance and goal data, which ruled out more complex per-student need formulas

Target Learners¶

• Students with disabilities in California K-12 schools

Target Learning Goals¶

• Aligning special education funding with student need to support comparable academic growth and close opportunity and achievement gaps

Claims¶

• Additional special education costs vary substantially by primary disability category [+W]
• Differentiating special education funding by disability, disability category, or student need can lead to improved outcomes for students with disabilities, and IEP-progress metrics offer a new adequacy-study measure [+W]
• Students with disabilities cost 50.5 percent more to educate to comparable academic growth than peers without disabilities [+W]
• California's shift to attendance-based AB 602 funding stabilized disability identification rates for about a decade, but rates have climbed steeply since 2010, so the policy's long-term intended outcomes were not produced [~W]
• Charter LEAs enroll a lower proportion of students with disabilities than traditional LEAs and serve smaller proportions in higher-cost disability categories [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Weighted student-based funding formulas that allocate resources according to student needs

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Doutre, S. M., Willis, J., Barrett, T., Ripma, T., Caparas, R., & Krausen, K. (2021). California State Special Education Funding System Study, Part 2: Findings, Implications, and Considerations for Improving Special Education Funding in California. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED616106